A gateway to action movies (a nice article by Risto Kolttonen, my younger brother)
Thoughts on the art of Lucio Fulci
The New York Ripper movie versus its English trailer
Fabio Frizzi's You Are Not The Same from Lucio Fulci's film Luca Il Contrabbandiere
Please note that I have intentionally omitted all kinds of "goodness indicators" that use stars or numbers to rate a movie's quality. You also will not find any "popularity indicators" either - this is not a site for those who like to follow current trends, i.e. those who mindlessly ape the decisions made by others. I could not care less about the movie popularity trends, or any other trends, for that matter. The creative drive behind this site is not at all commercial. I am not paid to promote anything. The things you see and read here come from the heart, and they have been done because I wanted to, not because someone gave me money to do them. This fact is very important to me, and reflects the unlimited free spirit of the whole www.kolttonen.fi site.
All the reviews presented here on www.kolttonen.fi are meant to be read in their entirety. I repeat: they do not, and never will, contain any kind of symbolic or numeric ratings. I think using stars or numbers to rate movies is meaningless at best, and distorting at worst. You should be able to watch and review a movie without resorting to discrete rating systems. I am skeptical even of the meaningfulness of the grading that is done at school, and all the more so when it comes to evaluating pieces of art. How do you assign the numbers without all kinds of prejudices and personal biases? Believe me: you cannot. It just will not work.
Why don't you free your mind and take a new look at the sites like www.imdb.com? The positive part is that they do contain lots of valuable information. The negative part is that the numeric ratings are seriously distorted. Some great but not so well known movies get ridiculously low ratings. Some inferior, but for some reason well known, movies get ridiculously high ratings. The numbers just do not mean a thing. I also would not be in the least surprised if it turned out that movie companies push their own releases up on the numeric scales, and downplay the competitors.
There are probably hordes of relatively unknown, good films, sometimes even carrying important messages, that are not, for one reason or another, considered "politically correct" or "desirable". In those cases the deplorable authorities, often political or religious, will do their best to supress the movies that criticize their ideologies. One such example is Lucio Fulci's fantastic 1972 giallo Non Si Sevizia un Paperino (Don't Torture a Duckling). It is clear that the catholic church intensely loathes this great film, and has done everything in its power to prevent people from seeing it. But now that the Internet is here to stay, nobody can supress our right to free speech. We can freely express our views and feelings. The conservative old media, such as radio, television or newspapers, would never grant us this kind of freedom. The huge importance of the Internet just cannot be overestimated.
In the end all I am asking from you is to reject your need for a "quick fix". Get used to the fact that I offer no numeric ratings, and when you go to the many other movie sites that use stars or numbers, try to ignore their ratings - or at the very least - take them with a grain of salt. To be on the safe side you should focus on the written content and think for yourself.
Never say: "I will not watch this movie, simply because its numeric rating is too low". You might miss a good movie.
Never say: "I will watch this movie, simply because its numeric rating is so high". You might step into a pile of crap.
It should go without saying that the numeric rating problems concern many other disciplines besides movies. For example music, painting, drawing, literature, comics, scientific enterprises, etc. So don't ever forget to use your brain when evaluating the "goodness" of anything.
Okay, on with the movie reviews. Enjoy.